I probably should have called this just “The Bad.”
Bad adult. Bad coder. Bad ukulele player. Bad at eating vegetables. Bad at learning languages. Bad at going to the gym…
I’m here because of a developer conference I attended recently in which there was a lot of talk about burnout and taking care of yourself. People talked about some great things like balancing the hustle with making sure you’re maintaining your mental health. These talks were great and the feedback was great. Everyone was thrilled, and everyone was relieved to know that their passion doesn’t have to destroy them.
I was sitting there with my heart quietly sinking in a familiar way, nursing my dirty little secret I’ve held for years now. I’m not burnt out at all. I’m not feeling the crushing weight of expectations, the pressure of doing so many side projects in your spare time while still maintaining a full-time job, being in a relationship, taking your dog for walks, going for a run under the hot sun… all of those things that people do.
I’m not burnt out because I’m not doing anything. I’m not learning anything on my spare time. I’m not doing any side projects. I’m not reading any newsletters. I dreaded every hackathon I applied for (and subsequently didn’t go to) and felt guilty about every game jam I missed. Yet still, I code for a living, feeling like a fraud all the while. Now, maybe, you can see why I’m hiding behind anonymity. In the tech world, this secret is akin to admitting you frequent underground dog fights. These are my secret sins.
The thing that is important to understand is you need to have a passion for continuous learning. If you don’t, you don’t belong in tech. That’s what the world tells me, and I get it. You can’t be a coder if you’re not passionate about learning new things because the tech world is constantly changing. In fact, if you’re not passionate about learning new things, where do you belong? Beats me, but let me know if you figure it out.
Don’t get me wrong, I actually have a few ideas for projects. And I do mean just a few. During university, I just wanted to get through my midterms without having a full-scale breakdown and questioning my whole life’s path, and I wasn’t really full of ideas. And now, a year or so from graduation, they still aren’t really flowing.
Every time I think about starting one of these ideas, I can hardly bring myself to open the computer. And when I do try to get started, possibly get a glimmer of hope that this could actually be fun or interesting, the impossibility of my tasks comes thundering at me from 50 open tabs as I scramble around trying to figure out how to get started or what anyone is talking about. Usually, I don’t even get that far. I can feel the computer calling me like a siren song of guilt from the other room, but instead of heeding the call, I hide under a blanket and turn on Netflix.
For me, my time as a Computer Science major in university was a showcase of my own inadequacy. Though my grades were often decent, I stumbled from one year to the next, one crisis to the next, whether academic or financial. I was accompanied by a continuous feeling of not knowing what the hell was going on and how I was going to keep up with it all. It was during this time that I realized the way I was feeling wasn’t healthy. I started seeing a therapist and the words “depression” and “anxiety” became a big part of my life. Sometimes I think I’ve never quite realized that I’m no longer in crisis.
People close to me tell me that maybe it is for this reason I don’t feel the drive to work on new projects or learn new things. Maybe it’s because I feel like I’m just getting through each day that I don’t want to do much in my spare time.
Whatever the reason, for the moment, this is me. This is who I am.
I’m a bad coder.
